Hornbeam, skittles and floppers

When lockdown began I set myself a pretty daunting task. I have a fairly extensive knowledge of native UK plants and animals but there was definite room for improvement. So I set myself some goals, one of which was to be able to identify every kind of tree I might come across in the countryside. 

A year or so later and I know a lot more evergreens (there are so many and all so similar!). I'm also pretty close to completing on the deciduous trees and the most recent 'tick' on my list is the Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus).

I've been regularly walking past a handful of them without realising because they're in among some Beech trees. It was only the fact that there's a lot of Beech mast (the hairy looking cases of the Beech nuts) at the moment that the Hornbeams suddenly stood out. And it's easy to see how I could have misidentified the trees. Their leaves are very similar. However, Beech leaves are more oval and have wavy edges while the Hornbeam leaf is sawtoothed. Here's some beech for comparison.

Mature Hornbeams can reach a height of 100 feet and live for more than 300 years. They are monoecious, meaning male and female catkins are found on the same tree. After pollination by wind, the female catkins develop into papery, green winged fruits, known as samaras. 

Hornbeam is notable for the density and hardness of its wood - the hardest of any European tree, in fact. The Romans used it build their chariots and our ancestors used it to make yokes to join a team of ploughing oxen together. The wooden ‘beam’ would have been attached to their horns which may have contributed to the tree’s name. Nowadays, the wood is mainly used for furniture, flooring and wood turning, but traditionally it was used for butchers' blocks, piano hammers, wood screws, coach wheels and cogs for windmills and water mills because it doesn't easily split. 

Another use was to make pub skittles. 

There was a time when many pubs had skittle alleys and the way the game was played varied from county to county, town to town and even pub to pub. Most commonly the game employs nine hornbeam pins and a ball or 'cheese' - a round, flattened wooden discus - made of lignum vitae. The pins all have names. There's the Front or King Pin, also known as a Bobby. There's the Copper - the pin on the extreme left or right of the frame - and the Birdie, also known in some places as Fat Annie (it's the pin in the very middle of the frame). They come in different shapes too. The Gloucester style is like a tall thin barrel, while the Welsh style is narrow and has a ball on top like a fat dolly clothes peg. Then there's the Bristol style which is thinner at the top and bottom with a fatter middle (you can see all of them on the excellent Trad Games website). 

There are also playing styles. I'm particularly taken by the 'flopper' in which the player throws himself or herself into the shot. You can see it in action here on this clip from an old Jack Hargreaves show:

     

I quite like this video about preserving London Skittles too:

     

Isn't it amazing where a leaf can take you?